Baseball cards stolen during Newburgh festival

Saturday

Sep 15, 2007 at 2:00 AM

City of Newburgh - Jim Sholar’s sort of like a Hideki Matsui, or Melky Cabrera, of the sports-card world: solid, working class, not too flashy. He sells crisp new cards of current players or rookie-year cards of stars like Derek Jeter for $50 a pop down on the Newburgh waterfront.He has collected for more than 20 years, and in recent years has made a living selling to casual collectors as one of the vendors with folding tables and lot of patience down on the city’s waterfront.Now, that business is over.Thieves wiped Sholar out on Labor Day weekend at the popular International Waterfront Festival. They stole thousands of cards – football, baseball, NASCAR, basketball – worth an estimated $30,000, he said.Sholar said he left his collection inside his sealed vendor tent on that Saturday night. The high level of security made him feel it was safe to leave his collection overnight.But when he returned the morning of Sept. 2, his tent was knocked over and the cards were gone. His was the only tent touched, Sholar said. Police confirmed no other robberies were reported. It was, in fact, the only major incident at this year’s festival.Anyone with information about the cards is asked to call Newburgh police at 561-3131.